Josh Sanderson is on the verge of becoming only the fourth
player in National Lacrosse League history to amass 1,000
points.

John Tavares, Gary Gait and Colin Doyle are the only ones to do
it before him.

"I know the three guys ahead of me are amazing players and, to
join them, it would be an honor just to be mentioned with those
three," said Sanderson.

It'll be quite an achievement for the 5-foot-7 Boston Blazers
forward, who weighs just 155 pounds. Sanderson has added about five
pounds in the last few years, and dismisses any notion he has
gotten soft.

''It's all muscle," he joked.

Sanderson has 960 points after picking up six in a 10-6 win in
Philadelphia in Boston's season opener Saturday. He should hit
1,000 in February if he stays healthy -- no problem,
considering the 33-year-old forward has missed just four games over
the last 10 seasons. Bruisers much bigger than Sanderson who try to
check him usually miss, because he's so elusive.

"I try to use my smarts and quickness," he said. ''I move my
feet and try to survive."

Boston's acquisitions of Sanderson, the 2010 NLL scoring
champion with 104 points, from the Calgary Roughnecks and of Casey
Powell, the 2010 league MVP, via a dispersal draft after the
Orlando Titans folded, injected considerable zip into an attack
already boasting 2009 league MVP Dan Dawson. The three working
together certainly enhance the Blazers' chances of winning the
Champion's Cup. Sanderson (2g, 4a), Powell (5g, 2a) and Dawson (8a)
piled up 21 points in the opener.

If they keep that up, there will be no stopping the Blazers.

"Dan missed an exhibition game and Casey missed a week of camp,
so we hadn't played a game together," Sanderson said. "That was our
first game together, and as it went on, we got better."

Sanderson has a history with both. He and Dawson have won three
Canadian senior championships during their summers playing amateur
lacrosse with the Excelsiors in Brampton, Ontario, just northwest
of Toronto. Sanderson and Powell were rookie teammates with the
Rochester Knighthawks way back when.

''Josh is the best lacrosse player I've ever played with,"
Dawson said. "He makes everyone around him better. He took me under
his wing early in my career. He is a great leader who has won at
every level he has played."

Sanderson is quick to stress that it's not a three-man show in
Boston. Kevin Buchanan, Jamie Rooney and Nick Cotter chipped in a
goal apiece in Philadelphia.

"We need everybody going," Sanderson said. "The three of us have
a lot of pressure on us to produce, but everybody in the offensive
unit has to be clicking if we're going to be any good."

Sanderson has already won NLL titles with the Toronto Rock in
2005 and with Calgary in 2009, when he was named playoff MVP, and
now is gunning for a third.

In Orangeville, further north of Toronto than Brampton and
almost an hour's drive, Sanderson works weekdays at a sporting
goods store that has a unique lacrosse-oriented management makeup.
He co-owns the store with his father Terry Sanderson, the general
manager of the Rock, and one of their employees is former Rock
assistant coach and new Blazers head coach Matt Sawyer. Josh
Sanderson and Sawyer were Brampton teammates on a Canadian junior
championship team; Sawyer then coached Sanderson in Brampton in the
summer and with the Rock in the winter before the two were reunited
by the Blazers.

So, what does he like about Sawyer as a coach?

"Matty lets you know what he expects from you," Sanderson said.
"I think he's a great coach."

For his first game with the Blazers, Sanderson flew out of and
back into Toronto with Dawson, goalie Anthony Cosmo and defensemen
Mike Kirk and Scott Campbell.

Sanderson said he'll keep playing "as long as I can be effective
and can help the team win."

"I definitely won't play be past my time. I've got a family and,
when I stop being productive, that'll be enough for me -- maybe
another three or four years at the most."

Meantime, he'll relish every day of the rest of his NLL
career.

"I like the group of guys we've got. We've just got to continue
to get better. I know we have a lot of hype around us, but we've
got to continue working hard and getting better."

Neil Stevens has covered professional
and Canadian summer lacrosse since 1971 for various media outlets,
including the Canadian Press. He retired from the CP in 2008. That
year, Stevens joined the late Tom Borrelli -- a longtime Lacrosse
Magazine contributor -- as the only media members recognized by the
National Lacrosse League Hall of Fame. He played from age 5 to 23,
including three years in the junior ranks and one year (1969) as a
professional in St. Catherines, Ontario.